


Time is a Ring

by stephanericher



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-16 04:00:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19310191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: There’s always a next time.





	Time is a Ring

**Author's Note:**

> for dw user pocket_panda, prompt was 'eternity with you'
> 
> brief mentions of war/blood

It doesn’t begin, and it hasn’t ended yet, and maybe that means it never ends, that they will always find pockets of time and space to fit into, no matter what the universe is. There were times before consciousness, probably; there are things dimly-recalled from an awareness that is not entirely compatible with the one Taiga has now, but there are countless in the tangle of the ones that are. Or perhaps it’s all the same strand, knotted up like yarn pulled out of a ball too fast, folding in on itself, because time is like that. Time is a ring with an invisible seam, but that could easily be Taiga’s preferred metaphor because of the way rings always seem to pop up. Daisy chains, woven around fingers, knotted blades of grass, jewels on fingers, weights around their necks, the way they have circled the globe countless times in pursuit of each other.

They can’t remember everything; they don’t always remember each other until later, when something seemingly random unlocks it, and it’s almost never at the same time. The time they had ended up in Oregon, Taiga hadn’t remembered until the middle of a fight, and all of a sudden Tatsuya’s frustrations with him had started to sink in, and also Tatsuya was waiting for a reply to his immediate accusation, which had been necessary but had also seemed like it ought to come after the fact that Taiga had remembered all of those places and moments.

So he’d just said, “I remember.”

Tatsuya had looked like he wanted to drag out the fight on principle, but like he couldn’t, a thousand tiny muscle twitches that Taiga has spent millennia memorizing.

There was a time when Tatsuya was more open, but the long arc of history, the angles that make up some proportion of the ring (or the entirety many times over, and then some--hadn’t he learned something like this in high school geometry once, twice, many times?) has bent him towards the way he is now, the things he is always hiding, but he still moves the same, makes the same expressions, as often as he relearns how to mask himself. Taiga can almost always get a grip on what Tatsuya’s thinking, before he knows how he knows, when they meet as adults and Tatsuya’s already so subtle. 

They have been soldiers on the same battlefield, in the same tent at night, when the smell of blood and dirt keep Taiga’s stomach turning and Tatsuya rubs his back until he falls into a fitful sleep, when Tatsuya’s too tired almost to stand, but keeps his face forward and Taiga keeps going, too. When Tatsuya has been a general, determined to keep the burden of all of this off Taiga’s back, but Taiga grabs more than his share anyway. They have explored empty territories together, felt their combined world expand at the edges. 

The look on Tatsuya’s face as he steps out of the shade and tugs Taiga over to see something, his impossibly-soft hand curled loosely around Taiga’s, the way (if they meet early enough, and they usually do) Taiga goes from looking up at Tatsuya to looking down--all of these are almost constant, and yet they are never repetitive. It is never the same, sliced out from a time and a place and context that make everything different. And even without that, Taiga would relive one lifetime again and again, if it met he could meet Tatsuya every time, if they would get to be together. 

A concept like destiny or soul mates is missing the point, taking an exit out of the loop and going straight across, cutting out what’s important and what makes all of this worthwhile. Nothing will explain why they end up finding each other, only that in their uncountable lifetimes they’ve had so many where they miss each other. For being in the wrong time, the wrong place, one of them simply absent, for passing each other on the street and perhaps brushing shoulders if the street’s a little narrow, but never looking closely enough to see. And even without that, there is no invisible force plucking the two of them out and pushing them together. If there were, why would they fall apart so often? Why have so many lifetimes involved drawn-out fights, periods of time where one or both of them disappears and they can’t find each other even when they both want it? Destiny, God, the Universe, something, might place them where they are, but they’re the ones who have to do the work of fixing the gaps that always erupt between them, adding expansion joints to the bridge so it’s steady enough to hold both of them over the water.

“I’m afraid sometimes that you’ll get tired of me,” Tatsuya says, the small smile on his lips tight, tighter than Taiga can hold him to attempt to make up for those feelings of inadequacy that always sprout over him and come back like a wisteria vine.

(He’s been working on them for centuries, but it’s hard. Taiga’s no closer to perfect.)

“Never,” Taiga promises, pressing a kiss to the back of Tatsuya’s neck. 

They have had so much already, but Taiga’s made his peace with how greedy he is--because eternity with Tatsuya would never be enough, and the years here and there, chopped between places and times and circumstances as it is will certainly never be enough. But Taiga will grab onto as much of it as he can at once, and if that means sinking his hands into buckets of ice and pulling out ice cubes until his skin is raw and throbbing and red, well, he’s suffered worse for Tatsuya before. 

Tatsuya doesn’t ask him if he’s sure, or how he knows. He rubs his thumb across Taiga’s, accepting (at least nominally) what he wants to be true (even though it is the truth). The ring on the chain around his neck gleams in the lamplight. Forever is a long time, even when it’s full of gaps, and realistically they can’t even see into the next life, where and when it’ll be, how and if they’ll be able to find each other. But they’ll find each other, somehow. There’s always a next time.


End file.
